Slavery investigation: Police in Brixton epa03962474 Police stand guard in front of a property in Brixton, Borough of Lambeth, south London, Britain, 23 November 2013. Two people who allegedly held three women as slaves in their south London home for more than 30 years had been arrested previous

The suspects accused of holding three women as slaves for more than 30 years can be revealed today as a couple who ran a bizarre Maoist sect in south London.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 73, and his wife Chanda set up a notorious communist collective and were well known to the police and the security services.

They were arrested last week after three women were rescued from a flat in Brixton after suffering years of "physical and mental abuse" allegedly at the hands of the couple.

The couple have now been linked to 13 properties across the capital while Lambeth Council faced increasing questions over their past contact with the pair.

Police carried out house-to-house inquiries over the weekend in and around Peckford Place, Brixton where the three women were found.

The three alleged victims - a 30-year-old Briton , a 57-year-old Irishwoman and a 69-year-old Malaysian - are said to have been kept in “invisible handcuffs” by the couple and only allowed to leave the flat under their control.

The suspects, who have been bailed, came to police attention after setting up a notorious communist squat in Acre Lane in Brixton in 1976 called the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre where their group, the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism- Mao Tsetung Thought (- later Mao Zedong Thought -) operated from.

Balakrishnan, a former member of the Communist party of England, who was known as comrade Bala, was expelled from the party in 1974 because his faction “attempted to put themselves above the discipline of the Party”.

The couple began recruiting women from other far-left groups and held lectures and film evenings.

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There are reports that Balakrishnan had been “politically detained since 1971 in Britain.”

Oxford University Professor Steve Rayner, director of the institute for science, innovation and society, researched the group in the 1970s.

He told the Standard: “They were a tiny, very tight-knit group clearly under the spell of their leader 'Comrade' Balakrishnan. Their membership was overwhelmingly overseas in origin. “Most were foreign students who seemed to have difficulty adjusting to life in the UK. They refused to recognise the legitimacy of the state and maintained a hostile attitude towards the establishment and towards the rest of the far-left in Britain at that time.

“Their ideology was profoundly detached from reality. In my article on the organisation I described them as a millenarian sect. Their bookshop in Brixton – the Mao Tse Tung Memorial Centre – closed around 1978. I had assumed that they had sunk without trace until this recent news.”

The number of properties associated with the couple, of Indian and Tanzanian origin who came to the UK in the 1960s, suggest that they were moving around to avoid the attention of the authorities.

At one time they were said to live in a property in Herne Hill where a neighbour recalled an incident in which a woman died after falling from a window.

There were increasing questions today over the role of Lambeth Council after claims that social workers missed ‘multiple’ opportunities to rescue the youngest alleged victim, known as Rosie.

Social services were first alerted to the case 15 years ago, when police asked them to pursue suspicions Rosie had never attended school.

Today it emerged she had been assessed by Lambeth social services as recently as in 2010 and 2011, following two separate spells in hospital.

It is not known whether she was admitted as a result of physical abuse she claimed to have suffered in secret letters written to a neighbour.

A source told the Standard that Rosie was assessed because she suffered from an ongoing disability caused by what they described as ‘an early-life event’.

Social services were helping put together a care package to enable her to return to the house in Peckford Place.

Council sources said it was an “extremely complex” operation to establish exactly what contact social services and other departments had with the alleged victim.

A source said: “We don’t yet know the extent of contact with the victim. We are just scratching the surface – it is extremely complex. We are having to trawl records that go back many, many years.”

Rosie is said to have written letters to a neighbour, telling of her life as being "like a fly trapped in a spider's web".

The woman became infatuated with neighbour Marius Feneck, 26, reportedly writing him more than 500 letters in seven years.

One letter apparently tells of how she suffered "unspeakable torment" behind locked doors and windows, and of how she was terrified that her captors - "these evil criminals... who dare to call themselves 'my relatives"' - might do something to him.

Leader of Lambeth Council, Lib Peck said: "Everyone has been horrified and shocked by the reports of three women allegedly being held against their will in Lambeth. It is vital that the police conduct a thorough investigation into these extremely complex and serious allegations and that the women receive support following their appalling ordeal. We will offer any assistance the police require to ensure there is justice for the women."

Metropolitan police commander Steve Rodhouse said that two of the women had met the male suspect through a "shared political ideology" and lived together in what he described as "a collective".

The case came to light after the Irish woman rang the Freedom Charity last month to say she had been held against her will.

The Met said that part of the agreement on October 25 when the women were removed from the address was that police would not take any action at that stage.

All three women are now in the care of a specialist non-governmental organisation.

Some 37 officers from the Met's human trafficking unit are working on the case.